Right now the ranks follow this scale

Contender 0-19
Brawler 20-50
Warrior 51-99
Gladiator 100-149
Veteran 150-199
Hero 200-299
Paragon 300-399
Champion 400

This system was implemented with the Ranked PvP player base of close to 4 years ago. While I feel that the ranked environment has recovered with the recent months' updates, I don't think it is enough to support the current wins required to reach Champion.

As someone who is heavily involved in both Ranked and Spar PvP, I can safely say that nobody will be able to get 400 rank this season without at least 1 entry into Battle Royale. It has been practically impossible for the last few seasons as well. Anybody who wants a weapon "legitimately" gets to ~300 rank and then goes into Royale. This is a self perpetuated cycle that will not solve itself. There are no matches at high ranks therefore people go into Royal to finish off and vice versa.

Current progression is fine until around ~150 rank. At this point you no longer get a match without queuing for hours. You will only face people who are greatly experienced. You will need to beat them around 15-20 times without losing a single match. Not only is this pool of players near single digits, those players are split up into different timezones and real life obligations. They won't be sitting in queue for 4 hours a day for the next 70 days to hopefully get enough wins.

There are two solutions that I feel could help alleviate the current state of the ranked environment without having to implement direct PvP balance changes.

1) Increase points gained from wins while leaving point losses the same or reducing them. Once you get to the top of the ranks, you will only be able to face people lower ranked than you. Every loss will cost you 18-20+ points per match while every win will get only get you 12 points. Often this means that each loss is equivalent to the point gains of 2 wins. In a generous estimation, it takes around 30 wins without any losses to hit Champion. If you factor in the point gains and losses, a single loss means you have to get 2 more wins to gain back the rank you lost. This is brutal when queue has declined to its current state.

2) Reduce rank required for Champion. There is no actual difference in skill between someone who hits 300 rank and someone who hits 400 rank. The obvious semantics of the point difference can be argued, but they clearly deserve the weapon if they've slogged through weeks of queue and have managed to get ~20 more wins than losses to hit 300 rank. I have hit 300 rank in 3 seasons in the last 2 years and have not gotten more than 3 matches in each of those seasons after doing so. I literally had no way to rank up without making P101 my full time job and waiting here 10 hours a day. Reducing rank required to 300 for Champion and adjusting other ranks appropriately I feel would help increase interest in ranked PvP and also make it easier for actual PvPer's to get the weapons without resorting to boosting.

PiratePikmin on Jan 6, 2019 wrote:

Right now the ranks follow this scale

Contender 0-19
Brawler 20-50
Warrior 51-99
Gladiator 100-149
Veteran 150-199
Hero 200-299
Paragon 300-399
Champion 400

This system was implemented with the Ranked PvP player base of close to 4 years ago. While I feel that the ranked environment has recovered with the recent months' updates, I don't think it is enough to support the current wins required to reach Champion.

As someone who is heavily involved in both Ranked and Spar PvP, I can safely say that nobody will be able to get 400 rank this season without at least 1 entry into Battle Royale. It has been practically impossible for the last few seasons as well. Anybody who wants a weapon "legitimately" gets to ~300 rank and then goes into Royale. This is a self perpetuated cycle that will not solve itself. There are no matches at high ranks therefore people go into Royal to finish off and vice versa.

Current progression is fine until around ~150 rank. At this point you no longer get a match without queuing for hours. You will only face people who are greatly experienced. You will need to beat them around 15-20 times without losing a single match. Not only is this pool of players near single digits, those players are split up into different timezones and real life obligations. They won't be sitting in queue for 4 hours a day for the next 70 days to hopefully get enough wins.

There are two solutions that I feel could help alleviate the current state of the ranked environment without having to implement direct PvP balance changes.

1) Increase points gained from wins while leaving point losses the same or reducing them. Once you get to the top of the ranks, you will only be able to face people lower ranked than you. Every loss will cost you 18-20+ points per match while every win will get only get you 12 points. Often this means that each loss is equivalent to the point gains of 2 wins. In a generous estimation, it takes around 30 wins without any losses to hit Champion. If you factor in the point gains and losses, a single loss means you have to get 2 more wins to gain back the rank you lost. This is brutal when queue has declined to its current state.

2) Reduce rank required for Champion. There is no actual difference in skill between someone who hits 300 rank and someone who hits 400 rank. The obvious semantics of the point difference can be argued, but they clearly deserve the weapon if they've slogged through weeks of queue and have managed to get ~20 more wins than losses to hit 300 rank. I have hit 300 rank in 3 seasons in the last 2 years and have not gotten more than 3 matches in each of those seasons after doing so. I literally had no way to rank up without making P101 my full time job and waiting here 10 hours a day. Reducing rank required to 300 for Champion and adjusting other ranks appropriately I feel would help increase interest in ranked PvP and also make it easier for actual PvPer's to get the weapons without resorting to boosting.

In actual fact, the Ranked PvP player pool has shrunk from the time of it's first showing. Unless we begin getting higher experience levels, new gear ( even crafted gear ), creating a new meta, this pool will continue to shrink until the only players are a small group of die-hard repeating champions.
The ranking system is fine, getting bodies into the queue is what's important. Reducing ranks will just spiral, if you can't get to 400, making 300 the new champion rank will just cause what is happening now. You'll hit a ceiling with no one to fight; and you'll be back here asking for another adjustment.

anecorbie on Jan 7, 2019 wrote:

In actual fact, the Ranked PvP player pool has shrunk from the time of it's first showing. Unless we begin getting higher experience levels, new gear ( even crafted gear ), creating a new meta, this pool will continue to shrink until the only players are a small group of die-hard repeating champions.
The ranking system is fine, getting bodies into the queue is what's important. Reducing ranks will just spiral, if you can't get to 400, making 300 the new champion rank will just cause what is happening now. You'll hit a ceiling with no one to fight; and you'll be back here asking for another adjustment.

Considering that KI implemented new weapons, I have to assume that they want people to be able to get the new weapons. As it stands now, nobody will get these weapons without extensive use of Royale. In the absolute worst case, even an ineffective change is better than doing nothing and it remaining impossible for actual people in queue to get the new items.

The system is not fine if 1/3 of it is dead 1 year after the release of Ranked PvP. I do not disagree that adding actual content is the best way to indirectly revive ranked PvP. These changes, however, would require little actual change for a chance at bringing a few more people into queue or keeping interest for people at the higher (but not the highest) ranks.

In the current queue, 300 rank is a deadzone. 150-250 is a bottleneck but there is still a possibility for matches against people with a few wins.

If KI keeps the matching algorithm the same where you get matches with people around 100 rank lower than you, under the new queue you'd be able to get matches until around 250. Compared to queue being dead for 150 rank (from 250-400), new queue would only be dead for 50 rank (from 250-300). I would be more willing to wait through around 5 matches of a long queue than 13+ matches of a long queue.

Another benefit comes in player enthusiasm. A lowered requirement for the upper 3 ranks as RRRRZZZZ419 said would definitely entice people to stay in queue for longer if the chance of them getting to Hero/Paragon/Champ were even slightly better.

At the end of the day, this is just one suggestion for KI to make a small change to maybe tie in along with any other changes they have coming in the future. Whether they take any suggestion in this thread or not, I don't think it could hurt to at the least try something in the meantime.